Kratochvilova Starts Farewell Tour : World Record-Holder Will Run Tonight at Sports Arena

When Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova appeared at a press conference on the UCLA campus this week, she was asked to discuss her future as a track coach.

Speaking through interpreter Olga Connolly, Kratochvilova sounded as if she had given some thought to the difficulties that face many superstars after they become coaches. She said she must learn not to expect too much too soon from her developing athletes.

“I don’t know if I will have the patience to wait 17 years, as my coach waited for me,” she said.

Hearing that, her coach, Miroslav Kvac, stepped forward, put his arm around Kratochvilova and shook her hand.

His trials as her coach since 1967, as well as hers, have been documented in a recently published book, appropriately titled “Waiting.”

It has yet to be translated into English, so we will have to take Connolly’s word when she says the book is about “all the years she was waiting for her top performances. Her greatness came after 17 years of trying.”

The problem with waiting so long to achieve greatness is that the stay at the top is so short-lived. Just as Kratochvilova was beginning to have fun, she was told that the party was over.

Thus, less than three years after she finally was recognized as one of track and field’s greatest competitors, she is retiring. Jarmila, we hardly knew ye.

She will begin her farewell tour tonight in the Sunkist Invitational meet at the Sports Arena, running 880 yards against a field that includes U.S. Olympian Kim Gallagher.

This will be the first of Kratochvilova’s seven U.S. and Canadian indoor appearances this winter, including The Times Indoor meet at the Forum on Feb. 21 and the Michelob Invitational meet in San Diego Feb. 23.

She said that, ideally, she would begin her retirement after the outdoor European championships next August at Stuttgart, West Germany. But she said she is not looking beyond the indoor season.

“Personally, I would like to do so well (indoors) that my coach can push me to continue training until Stuttgart,” she said. “But if he wants to give it up after the indoor season, that’s the decision that will be made.”

Kratochvilova, who will be 35 on Jan. 26, originally announced her retirement in 1984, saying that she would make her final appearance in the Olympics. Obviously, she changed her mind.

Might she change it again?

“For three years now, I have been saying I would quit,” she said. “Then, I realize that the sport of track is much too beautiful to quit. But this is definitely my last year.”

She will not soon be forgotten. After emerging internationally in 1981, when she was ranked first in the world in the 400 meters and second in the 200, she had one of the best years anyone has ever had in 1983, setting world records in the 400 and the 800. Her world record of 1 minute 53.28 seconds in the 800 still stands.

Her performance at the world championships in Helsinki that year was astonishing. Competing in the 400 and the 800, she had to run seven races. Thirty-five minutes after winning her semifinal heat in the 400, she won the 800 final. The next day, she won the 400 in 47.99 seconds, a world record that was broken last year by East Germany’s Marita Koch.

Suddenly, after 17 years in the sport, she was discovered, which was not entirely a good thing.

On one hand, she was Track & Field News’ Athlete of the Year.

On the other hand, she was put under a microscope by fans, the media and other athletes. Some noted her masculine build and speculated that she was using performance-enhancing drugs, such as steroids.

When U.S. quarter-miler Rosalyn Bryant called Kratochvilova Wonder Woman, it was not meant as a compliment.

A West German competitor, Gaby Bussman, once called Kratochvilova a man.

“If Bussman worked as hard as I do on the weights, she would have a different impression of beauty,” she said in response to the barb from the West German.

“One day, if she produces performances like mine, she will have to have sacrificed some of her good looks. In athletics, one has to decide how much to sacrifice. The women of the West don’t work as hard as we do.”

Kvac, her coach, said Kratochvilova was embarrassed by some of the comments made about her. Even though she couldn’t read the foreign-language sports sections, she knew what the critics were saying because of the kinds of questions asked of her at press conferences.

Not only did she answer all of the questions, she answered them politely and usually with a shy smile. Through it all, she displayed an endearing charm that has nothing to do with the earrings she wears when appearing in the West.

At her press conference this week, no one asked Kratochvilova about drugs or her muscles or her earrings.

The questions were about her performances, her retirement and her future.

Perhaps all of the other questions already have been asked. This is, after all, her third appearance in Los Angeles since the Sunkist Invitational in 1984.

Or perhaps the questions no longer seem so pertinent. Back problems have prevented her from reaching her 1983 level. Although she won the 800 meters at the Mobil Grand Prix finals in Rome last September, she is hardly unbeatable. She lost three times to Romania’s Doina Melinte in Europe last summer.

Maybe now, she will be allowed to leave the sport in peace.

In discussing her future, she said she hopes to be at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, as a coach.

“There is quite a lot of talent in Czechoslovakia, especially in the countryside,” she said. “Big-city kids are not so easy to motivate. I would like to travel around the countryside, find this talent and develop it. That is my challenge.”

Asked if she had any regrets about her career as a runner, she said she would like to have won an Olympic gold medal. In 1980 at Moscow, she finished second in the 400. She would have been favored to win the 800 in Los Angeles, but the Czechs boycotted the Games.

“A gold medal is more important than the two world records,” she said. “When you have a world record, someone else can break it the next day. When you have a gold medal, you have it.”

Track Notes High school events will begin at 4:45 this afternoon. The first open event is the pole vault, which will start at 6:30. . . . The pole vault field includes six 19-foot jumpers, including the last two Olympic champions, Pierre Quinon of France and Wladislaw Kozakiewicz, who won the gold medal in 1980 for Poland but has since defected to West Germany. Also vaulting is Billy Olson, who had the world indoor record of 19-2 3/4 until Wednesday, when the Soviet Union’s Sergei Bubka cleared 19-3 at Osaka, Japan. . . . There are athletes here from 12 foreign countries, a Sunkist record. . . . Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan is competing in the mile. He hasn’t lost at that distance indoors since Feb. 21, 1981. His primary competition tonight is expected to come from Steve Scott, the American record-holder in the mile and the 1,500 meters, and Switzerland’s Pierre Deleze, who beat Sebastian Coe in the 1,500 at Zurich last summer. . . . The Olympic gold and silver medalists in the 200 meters, Valerie Brisco-Hooks and Florence Griffith, will meet at 300 yards.